An elderly woman reaches into the depths of her burqa for a small plastic bag, not even the size of a grocery sack.

KABUL–An elderly woman reaches into the depths of her burqa for a small plastic bag, not even the size of a grocery sack.

She'll take this much flour.

It requires only two scoops from a burlap-lined bushel for the merchant to fill his customer's bag, weighing the precious commodity on battered scales. A fistful of Afghan dollars changes hands.

This purchase will be barely sufficient for a family's bread-baking needs for one day.

Afghanistan, among the poorest nations in the world, is a country that lives by bread, the flat oblongs that emerge steaming from clay ovens. For many, bread rolled round a ragout of vegetables can be the entirety of a meal.

It is literally the staff of life.

But in some acutely impoverished regions, famished Afghans have been reduced to buying bread crust by the gram, softening the hardened bits in water, unable to afford flour at all.

The global food crisis has slammed Afghanistan hard, despite a good grain harvest last year. Wheat prices have risen by an average of 60 per cent over 2007, 300 per cent during a spike period in the early months of 2008: 46 Afghanis per kilo. That's less than $1, but this is a country where half the population lives below the poverty line.

"I have eight children to feed," complains Gulam Farouk, a 45-year-old civil servant who earns 3,000 Afghanis (about $63) a month, when he's paid. "How can I keep them from going hungry?"

He was humping a five-kilo sack of flour at the Mandawi Bazaar, Kabul's vast and higgledy-piggledy street market, where goods are sold from narrow open-front shops, rusty wheelbarrows and sagging dray carts.

Flour, beans, rice, pulses – they have become like saffron, relative to the ordinary Afghan's income.

"I buy food and that means my children don't get shoes," Farouk continues. "Without shoes and clothes, they can't go to school."

This is how poverty radiates, difficult choices imposed on families trying to cope with their most urgent requirements.

"Am I expected to steal in order to eat?" asks Sidiq Ullah, a 42-year-old carpenter. "I'm sure the president eats well in his palace. But what is he doing for us? All this money that's coming into Afghanistan from the international community, I haven't seen any of it. For Afghans, life just gets harder and harder."

In fact, President Hamid Karzai is credited by aid agencies for grasping early, before the crisis exploded, that a food shortage loomed. While a myriad of global forces have caused the crunch – Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz last week blamed the world food shortage on farmers turning to biofuel production rather than food crops – Afghanistan's specific dilemma can be blamed, as is so often the case, on neighbouring Pakistan.

Faced with its own food problems, Pakistan banned the commercial export of flour to Afghanistan. Even in a good year, Afghanistan needs to import half a million tonnes of grain to feed itself, the majority of that from Pakistan.

Earlier this week, after high-level meetings, Islamabad softened its position, approving the export of 50,000 tonnes of wheat to Afghanistan to ease the situation, on a government-to-government basis, but commercial sales remain prohibited.

At the apex of the crisis, in February, the United Nations World Food Program appealed to the international community to help feed the 2.5 million Afghans most severely affected by food shortages. Ten donor countries – including Canada – responded promptly, covering nearly all of the $78 million requested to purchase 89,000 tonnes of mixed commodities. That was for immediate relief, covering a period of about four months, until the Afghan harvest comes in.

"Canada is our second-biggest donor," says Rick Corsino, World Food Program country director for Afghanistan. "Canadians should be proud of that."

Ottawa committed $10 million, half of which had to be spent purchasing wheat from Canadian farmers. Twelve thousand tonnes of wheat from Canada is scheduled to arrive within the next week or so.

The World Food Program in Afghanistan has money now, Corsino explains, but remains largely stymied in trying to buy essential food products such as grains because there are few sellers. "We've been trying since February to buy 100,000 tonnes of wheat but haven't been able to find it."

Distribution of the wheat that did arrive, through donor countries, began in March with assistance to some 400,000 Afghans most direly in need. "But we still urgently need 30,000 tonnes to fulfill our obligations under the appeal," Corsino notes.

Free food handouts go first to "carefully selected beneficiaries" – female-headed households, the disabled, large families with many mouths to feed and recently displaced people. "The neediest of the needy," says Corsino.

In rural areas, a food-for-work program is usually implemented – commodities in exchange for road repair or preparing irrigation channels, which alleviates the beggar-bowl stigma for proud Afghans.

Yet even when the harvest comes in – and agriculture experts are predicting this will be a poor year because the winter snowfall wasn't deep and the spring melt run off insufficient – Afghanistan is facing an 8 per cent shortfall in its grain needs for the next seasonal cycle.

It's not a problem that's going away and nobody expects wheat prices to drop back to 2006 levels. Yet while grain prices go up, there appears little financial incentive for Afghan farmers to switch over from growing poppies. A farmer can still make between six to 12 times as much from a narcotic yield.

The chronic grind of food shortage is having profound effects on Afghan society and what was already a mean quality of life. Where an average family was spending 60 per cent of its income on food a year ago, it's now spending 75 per cent.

"Prices go up, but their income hasn't changed," says Corsino. "It means getting rid of a lot of discretionary income purchases. And by discretionary, I mean doing away with health care, not sending children to school, selling off assets. Farmers will sell their seeds, small implements, even livestock to buy food. Ultimately, you see migration of families, or at least the bread-earners.

"What we've seen already is a lot more beggars on the street, women and very small children."